The collection of emoji will grow in the coming months, with the 31 proposed new entries including a shaking face, a donkey, a jellyfish and hearts in a range of colors. The proposal also includes an array of left- and right-facing hands, which likely will be used to indicate high fives.
This is by far the shortest list of new emoji proposed in years. It seems the Unicode Consortium thinks the already available collection is close to complete.
Fun new emoji for 2023
The meaning and emotion behind plain text messages can sometimes be hard for the reader to interpret. Adding an emoji adds context. And, of course, an emoji can serve as the whole message when it’s as simple as ♥️.
The collection of these pictograms grows every year, and the Unicode Consortium revealed Emoji 15.0 on Wednesday. This gives the world its first look at possible upcoming new emoji.
A pink heart is high on the list, along with hearts in gray and light blue. There’s a hyacinth and a peapod. People could soon add maracas or a fan to their messages. And there’s a wireless symbol, plus a Khanda, the symbol of the Sikh faith.
Image: Emojipedia
Not all of these are guaranteed to make the cut. The Unicode Consortium will make the final decision this September. The approved emoji likely will appear in operating system updates for iPhone, Mac, iPad and Apple Watch in early 2023.
Emojipedia drew attention to just how skimpy the list of proposed emoji for 2022 is.
“The draft list for Emoji 15.0 contains only 31 recommended emojis,” the website wrote, “while 2021’s Emoji 14.0 contained 112 recommendations, while 2020’s Emoji 13.0 and Emoji 13.1 contained 334 between them.”
The small number of proposed additions could be a sign that the Unicode Consortium doesn’t see many gaps in the current choices.
A long approval process
The process of proposing and approving emoji is complex because devices don’t send pictures to each other — they send Unicode numbers. It’s up to each device to turn the number into a picture. So the sender and receiver must agree on what those Unicode numbers represent.
The Unicode Consortium assigns the Unicode numbers. It also offers reference designs to Apple, Google, Twitter and others that make software using emoji. These companies then come up with their own versions.
